By Nick Erni: May 6th
Day two started off at a bright and early 7:00 am sharp. I took a quick shower and was out the door to the breakfast station in the hotel. The breakfast in the German hotel was not much different from American breakfast, it was just the fact they had significantly more meats available at such an early hour.
After we ate we boarded the tram at “Kings Plaza” and we were on our way to Augsburg university to begin our company projects with the German students. The tram was an easy 15 minute ride, but right when we got there we dove into our work. We had about an hour and a half to work on a basic presentation surrounding information about our companies. In my groups case we were working with Continental. My group had four American students including myself, Frank, Brett and Steph, and three German students which included Matthias, Freddie and Luca. In the short time we had to make the 12 slide presentation, we worked very diligently, yet it still proved to produce some serotonin (a.k.a. stress). The language barrier in the presentation was no problem, the German students all spoke English fluently, but when there was disparities between the languages when it came to spelling. After the hour and a half of working and about 12 minutes of presenting we finished the first part of our project here in Augsburg, in which we felt went very smoothly. Meeting the students for the first time then working with them minutes later was a great learning lesson for me that I will be able to take back to the states in my studies and my job, because it is for sure not everyday over half of your team you are working with is not native to your language.
After the project, we went on a scavenger hunt with the Masters students throughout Augsburg. In the hunt we visited a number of landmarks, including the Dom and town hall once again, the three main fountains in the area, a look at WWK Arena, and St. Ulrich. While doing the scavenger hunt our group was tasked with finding artifacts and information throughout these locations in an effort to win a prize. This scavenger hint proved to be my favorite part of the day, not only because we had a good time doing it, but also because we were able to experience the main cultural sites in the city. Something that was quite funny, was one of tasks in front of the Dom, which required our group to reenact a fountain which consisted of a man riding a horse, fish spitting out water, angels, and saints. This picture we reenacted proved to be meaningful, because it pushed my team ahead of the other in the points system and allowed us to win the scavenger hunt, shoutout to the Ausgang.
After all this site seeing, the groups went to a German pub, from there we taste tested some non-alcoholic beers. There were three different beers which consisted of an IPA, a very fruity beer because of the high concentration of hops (which was also my favorite), and two other wheat beers. After about an hour at this pub we made our way to the restaurant Dragone.
Dragone is an Italian restaurant, in which pretty much everyone got pizza. But the catch here for Reid and I, was the fact in Germany the word pepperoni means actual peppers and not the meat. So we both ordered incorrectly. We should’ve said we wanted Salami pizza instead. The food at the restaurant was great and so were the conversations.
There after we made our way back to the hotel where everyone changed and headed back out to a local place called the “Pool House”. There, about 17 people from the trip just chilled out and played some good old billiards. The problem was, the owner gave us the balls to the table without notifying us he was charging us a fixed fee and also a minutely rate for playing. We ended up playing for about an hour so we owed the man 30 Euros. After the dibocal everyone made their way back to the hotel in order to be ready to go to Hirshvogel at 8 am the next morning.
Also the car of the day went to a Bentley Continental GT.
